Global Warming and Polar Cities

Saturday, January 20, 2007

''Polar Cities'' in the Year 2121 A.D. - OPED news update September 2012

THIS OPED APPEARED IN THE TAIPEI TIMES on September 4, 2012:

Climate activist Danny Bloom has done it again, penning a hardhitting oped online and in print, but does he get it right, or is it just more hot air from a man who knows not what he is talking about?. Readers can decide for themselves. Do leave your comments below or email bikolang @ gmail DOT com

Earth has gone past the point of no return

By Danny Bloom , Sept. 3, 2012

In two recent commentaries about climate change, Jeffrey Sachs (“Our summer of climate truth,” Aug. 1, page 9) and George Monbiot (“Rich world’s smugness will melt with the ice,” Aug. 31, page 9) emphasized that not only is climate change real and about to turn this planet into a global emergency ward, but if we are not careful, it may be curtains for the human race. Of course, these words, whether written by Sachs, Monbiot or other climate Cassandras, generally fall on deaf ears. Life tomorrow will go on as usual in Taipei, in Washington and in London.
Sachs, who is an adviser to the UN secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals and professor at Columbia University, pulled no punches in his piece. Monbiot went even further.
However, in my opinion both Sachs and Monbiot are still in denial about the real impact of climate change and global warming on this planet and on the future prospects for humankind.
They talk about “solutions,” as if some magical fix will make everything all right. Sachs speaks as if it is not too late to stop climate change and global warming, and once the world switches to alternative energy sources such as wind, water or solar power, everything will be okay.
It is too late. What we need to do is prepare for any potential climate chaos that might turn Taiwan and the rest of the world toward barbarianism as climate change creates huge migrations to the north of the globe. It will not be a pretty picture. There will be no Taiwan, there will be no lower 48 in the US anymore. All human life will settle in northern regions to endure a punishing, terrible hell on Earth.
Listen, lawmakers, world leaders and policymakers: Nothing will ever be okay again. No more comforting words about how everything will be okay once we find a way out of this mess. What very few people want to acknowledge, even luminaries like Sachs and Monbiot, is that we have already lost the battle.
The human species is at risk of extinction in 30 more generations. Sachs does not want to face this possibility since his well-paid career as an Ivy League economics professor means that he has to keep offering “solutions” and “fixes.”
He cannot understand that while the planet will recover from climate change impacts in the future, the human species has now passed the tipping point and billions will die over the next 500 years as climate chaos engulfs all nations, including Taiwan. Monbiot might understand this, but cannot write such words. It would cost him his job as a columnist for the Guardian.
What humankind is facing is not pretty and very few academics or climate activists want to go there. Their jobs and careers depend on creating hope that we can find solutions to this mess. The sad and tragic fact is that there are no solutions, no fixes, as Monbiot actually hints at but cannot bring himself to say outright. In the near future, perhaps just 100 or 200 years from now, billions of people will head north to Arctic climes, from Russia to Canada to Alaska.
In the southern hemisphere, millions of climate refugees will search for shelter in New Zealand and Tasmania and even Antarctica. Sachs and Monbiot know this but cannot bring themselves to write it out in the public prints because they are in denial. Everyone is in denial.
Planting more trees and recycling chopsticks is not going to do the trick. Humanity is doomed. However, some remnants of civilized people will survive and repopulate the Earth. They will survive in makeshift polar settlements scattered across the northern and extreme southern regions of the planet. What we need is to set up task forces and government commissions worldwide to study and discuss this kind of “adaptation” in a fragile world. Taiwan cannot stick its head in the sand.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Polar cities are proposed sustainable polar retreats designed to house human beings in the future, in the event that global warming causesthe central and middle regions of the Earth to become uninhabitablefor a long period of time. Although they have not been built yet, some futurists have been giving considerable thought to the concepts involved.High-population-density cities, to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable energy and transportation infrastructure, will requiresubstantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants(such as the various alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes andmycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need forpetroleum-derived fertilizers. Regional probiotic soil improvementshould perhaps rank high on any polar cities priority list. JamesLovelock's notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value.

[Polar cities should be in active construction within 50 years. These SPR's, sustainable polar retreats, in other words, will function primarily to house potential survivors of catastrophic global warming events in the far distant future, perhaps by the year 2121 or so. ]

You know the story. Climate change is for real. In the future, maybe in 50 years, maybe in 100 years, maybe in 300 years, maybe even not until 1000 more years, but someday, I believe, humankind will need to have sustainable polar retreats --POLAR CITIES -- to house remnants of humankind who might be able to survive the coming big global warming event. Here's a date to think about: 2121 A.D.
I got the idea, of course, from James Lovelock, who has said in several interviews that he believes only a few breeding pairs (of humans) might be able to survive in polar regions. He said that in the Guardian recently. After I read that, I had a eureka moment, as they say, and I envisioned the need to start thinking about, designing, planning and maybe even building, NOW, when we still have time and resources and transportation and fuel, NOW, polar cities and towns in both polar regions.
I realize this is a radical idea. I realize most people won't accept what I am blogging about. That's okay. This is just something to make you think HARD about what we are getting into, with global warming for real and all that. Maybe the radicalness of my idea will be perceived as so far out as to be rejected by most people. However, even if this blog makes people THINK more about what they can do in the global warming fight, then good! For example, we need to get the world population way down, soon, to about one billion people, by 2500. How? We need to stop using cars, ships, coal-burning power plants and airplanes NOW. Well, soon. Who is ready?
So this POLAR CITIES -- Sustainable Polar Retreats -- blog is online for two reasons: one is to actually contribute the idea of real sustainable polar retreats for the future, to house those who might remain, so that someday they can go back to the middle regions and repopulate the Earth. The other reason for this blog is to get people to take global warming seriously and start doing something concrete in their lives about it. Because if a human being in 2007 can even "think" about or ponder the very idea of polar cities to house remnants of humankind, then we are really in deep trouble.
Here are some questions that must be asked: And answered:
1. Who will go to live in these northern and southern Sustainable Polar Retreats?
2. Who will decide who gets to live in them? The UN? Who?
3. Who will design and build these Polar Cities -- Sustainable Polar Retreats -- and where? Sites? Murmansk? Wrangel Island? Resolute? Longyearbyen? Fairbanks? Anchorage? Baffin Island? Greenland?
4. Should they be built now, when we have time and resources and air transport and fuel available, and get them ready for the future when the world MIGHT need them, or should we wait until later, when it might be too late to build things or transport materials?
5. How many people can these polar cities and towns support? 100,000? One million? More?
6. Who will govern and rule these polar cities?
7. Will the rich and powerful people from developed nations be invited in first?
8.Who will plan for food resources, enterainment, TV, radio, newpapers, Internet, money there?

9. How long will the Global Warming Era last? 100 years, 10,000 years, 100,000 years? More?
10. Are we in big trouble, caused mostly by our own hands on the CO2 spigot all these years? What can we do to solve the problem?
11. How to repopulate the temperate and tropical regions of the Earth once an hospitable climate comes BACK to to those areas after the long global warming era, the day after tomorrow, so to speak?
COMMENTS WELCOME. Pro and con!FIELD NOTES: a researcher tells me: "I have no blog yet, and my own developing opinions on the best response to the climate change crisis are not yet ready for publication. I do think that the crisis will get very serious quicker than many people expect. On much of my home continent of North America, a Dust Bowl period of drought, wildfire, thirst and famine looks probable. Like you, I've read James Lovelock and other sources on the topic. I observe that "polar cities" = which I take to mean high-population-density cities to be built near the Arctic Rim with sustainable (or nuclear) energy and transportation infrastructure = will require substantial nearby agriculture. Boreal soils are largely poor in key nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, but nitrogen-fixing plants (like thevarious alders) with the proper symbiotic microbes and mycorrhizal fungi can likely remedy such poverty without the need for petroleum-derived fertilizers. So I suggest that regional probiotic soil improvement should perhaps rank high on the "polar cities"priority list. Lovelock's notion of a widely distributed almanac of science knowledge and post-industrial survival skills also appears to have value."}
THE FIRST BLOG TO MENTION POLAR CITIES EVER:

========================A FUTURE PRESS RELEASE:Year 2121 A.D. -- Media Alert: The world's media to Svalbard !!! 30 journalists from all over the world will on Wednesday visit the World's First Model Polar City which is under construction on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. 22.08. .... 2121A.D. Construction work on the Svalbard Model Polar City (SMPC) started in April 3007 and the first blastings were performed in May. The facility will be opened on 15 February 2121. The visit to the facility will be lead by Project Manager Magnus Bredeli Tveiten from the Norwegian construction body Statsbygg. Part of the tour will include press briefings by Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoey, the head of the UN's Climate Secretariat Yvo de Boer, Development Minister Erik Solheim, the head of the Polar City Research Institute and the governor of Svalbard. The SMPC is being constructed as a cave excavated into the permafrost just outside Longyearbyen. The SMPC is intended to ensure survival for some 200,000 survivors of global warming in the year 2121, and will have storage capacity for food and supplies. (Press release) 2208 A.D. =========PREDICTION:Polar cities should be in active construction within 50 years. These SPR's, sustainable polar retreats, in other words, will functionprimarily to house potential survivors of catastrophic global warmingevents in the far distant future, perhaps by the year 2121 or so. It'sgood to be prepared, according to the U.N. Homelands Security Officein Oslo, and these polar cities, situated in both polar regions of theplanet, will be capable of handling up to 2 million people -- humanbreeding pairs and their families -- to ensure the continuation of ourspecies. After the Earth's temperatures cool enough to permitresettlement of the planet's temperate and tropiocal regions again,the polar cities will become historical oddities and turned intomusuems, according to the UN office. Learn more online, just google"polar cities" or check the Wikipedia entry for them.